Author: THE HOBBLEDEHOY

Michael Stevenson, aka Dai Bando, Johnny Foreigner, Monsieur Pas De Merde, is a blogger of French and British culture. His blogs "Pas De Merde" and "The Hobbledehoy" have been called "marvelous" by some, and "meh" by others.

6 Best Movies Set In Paris

Read about some of the best movie sets in the wonderful and romantic city of Paris. From Hugo to Midnight in Paris, this list has it all.

by SVETLANA STERLIN

Paris, beyond being the city of love, makes for an atmospheric and visually pleasing film setting. Whether the story involves characters falling in love, discovering something about themselves, or learning the history of France, the setting often makes the story more enjoyable for viewers and encourages characters to go exploring. Here are six great films set in Paris.

Midnight In Paris (2011)
Owen Wilson stars as a screenwriter named Gil Pender, giving an excellent dramatic performance, though still infused with his trademark comedic quirks. Accompanying Gil on his trip to Paris is his fiancé (Rachel McAdams) and her parents. He hopes to find inspiration in the city to write his first novel, even though he’s not sure he’s up to the task.

Every night, he goes for a midnight walk, but he doesn’t just walk through the Parisian streets – he finds himself travelling back through time to the 1920s, his golden age of literature. Gil meets Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, and his other creative idols, all of whom seem to be awaiting his arrival, ready to give him writing advice.

Hugo (2011)
Martin Scorsese isn’t the first director one might think of for a children’s movie, but Hugo offers a story that transcends easy categorisation. The film begins as young Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is orphaned in the 1930s, left to fend for himself at a Parisian train station, where he operates the clocks after his father’s death. One of the few possessions his father (Jude Law) has left Hugo is his automaton that requires a special key to activate it.

Hugo befriends Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz) after stealing from her godfather’s toy store. She helps Hugo solve the mystery of his father’s automaton, which leads them on an adventure of discovery about the history of filmmaking.

Amélie (2001)
Audrey Tautou stars as the titular character in this charming French romantic comedy directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Amélie is a quirky protagonist who is raised isolated from peers her age after her parents mistakenly diagnose her with a heart condition.

The film focuses on her young adulthood in Paris, where she’s surrounded by characters almost as quirky as her. A chance discovery of a box of childhood treasures in her apartment leads her on a search for their owner, which in turn leads Amélie on a search for love.

Les Misérables (2012)
Les Misérables has been made and remade for the screen many times, as well as staged for theatre productions. Many of the adaptations are worthy, but the 2012 version may be one of the most popular. Based on the classic French novel by Victor Hugo published in 1862, the story of Les Misérables follows Jean Valjean (in this movie, Hugh Jackman) as he tries to start a new life after being released from prison.

But after breaking parole, he is pursued by the ruthless policeman Javert (Russell Crowe). Valjean takes a young girl (Amanda Seyfried) into his care but can never escape Javert’s wrath. Anne Hathaway also stars in the film, a performance that earned her an Academy Award. The musical drama is guided by emotion to explore oppression, rebellion, and freedom against the backdrop of war.

Casablanca (1942)
One of the most iconic war romances of all time, Casablanca is an emotional tale of a nightclub owner named Rick (Humphrey Bogart) who helps his ex-lover escape into a better life with her husband. The story takes place during World War II, which makes the film very timely, and all the more resonant with contemporary audiences.

Though the primary story is set in Casablanca, Morocco, much of the significance behind Rick and Isla’s romance is centered around Paris. Paris becomes such an integral part of the story that it feels almost like a character, haunting them as their feelings for one another resurface.

Ratatouille (2007)

Ratatouille (2007)
An animated film, Ratatouille tells the story of a rat who dreams of becoming a renowned French chef. He doesn’t take into consideration that humans despise rodents and would never even try a meal prepared by them.

The ideas presented within the film struck a chord with many viewers, young and old, and earned the film an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film.

Source: 6 Best Movies Set In Paris – Our Culture

Mon Dieu! Jesus drives the demons into les cochons. Porquoi?

By Monsieur Pas de Merde, Michael Stevenson

“Now there was a herd of many pigs feeding at a distance from them. And the demons begged Him, saying, “If You are going to cast us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” And Jesus said to them, “Go!” And they came out and went into the pigs; and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters.” (Matthew 8:28-33)

Image result for jesus drives demons into swine

Two thoughts about this:

First, why did Jesus have to send the demons into the poor little piggies? They didn’t do anything wrong. I love pigs.

Second, imagine the poor pig farmer the next day: “Who the hell drowned all my piggies? What is my family gonna do for money this year? I’m ruined!”

So – I think Jesus really messed up here. Uncharacteristically.

Say Amen, somebody

Falling Back in Love With French via Netflix

French Netflix

How shows like “Lupin” and “Call My Agent!” have inspired me to pursue French fluency.

BY ELLA RILEY-ADAMS

Growing up with a francophile mother, French has always been part of my life. My special stuffed animal was Babar the elephant, and weekends were spent singing the translated version of “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” with a group of children who were far more multilingual than me. In college, I spent a year studying in Paris, living with a host family and their three-legged dog, Colonel Moutard. Still, like many adults who spent their school years learning a foreign language, my opportunities to speak it dwindled after graduation, and so did my confidence. Continue reading “Falling Back in Love With French via Netflix” →

What to Watch After You’ve Finished ‘Lupin’

If you want to go deeper, and darker, into what la belle France has to offer, here are some shows you’ll want to stream next.

BY TAYLOR ANTRIM

Caroline Proust as Laure Berthaud in France's Spiral.

French TV is having a bit of a moment. That’s mostly thanks to Netflix’s Lupin, the soigné gentleman-caper series starring Omar Sy that debuted on the service earlier this month and promptly swept The Queen’s Gambit crowd off its feet. (And not just them: Lupin attracted the attention of some 70 million subscribers in January, according to Netflix, more than have watched Bridgerton, Emily in Paris, even—mon dieu—Tiger King.) And no wonder: Lupin is zippy, light, irresistible, the kir royale of TV. (Call My Agent is also seducing the Champagne-streaming set with its Parisian blend of urbane workplace comedy and atomized sex appeal.)

I’m a French TV partisan. I love this. But I have to say, especially when it comes to Lupin, I feel a bit left out. The French do crime better than anyone (except maybe the Scandis), and Sy is incredibly appealing, but Lupin has too much romanticism and frictionlessness to satisfy proper crime fans like me. It’s escapism—nothing wrong with that. But if you want to go deeper, and a bit darker, into what la belle France has to offer, here are some shows you’ll want to stream next.

The Bureau

Image may contain Clothing Apparel Coat Suit Overcoat Human Person Blazer Jacket Mathieu Kassovitz and Man

France’s hit spy series is more John le Carré than Homeland—and thank goodness. Realism and humanity prevail in this complex but absorbing drama, which has been helmed by Éric Rochant through five seasons. (The recent season finale was turned over to celebrated filmmaker Jacques Audiard.) It’s part workplace drama, part character study, part globe-hopping suspense series as DGSE agents infiltrate jihadist groups and tangle with the CIA. The lead, Mathieu Kassovitz, who plays a superspy code-named Malotru, is a fascinating study in French masculine ideals—handsome, wounded, lovelorn, stubbornly brilliant, kind of short. Hugely recommend.

How to Watch: Stream on Sundance Now

Spiral

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Another long-running classique of French TV, Spiral takes the cop-and-justice beats of Law & Order and the subtlety and knottiness of The Wire and combines them in a deeply satisfying police procedural. Lupin makes the French capital look glossy and alluring; Spiral takes off the filters and shows Paris’s grimy side. The crime scenes can be gruesome and macabre, but this is not a sensationalist show, and its leads, particularly Caroline Proust as the police captain Laure Berthaud, are ruggedly human and flawed in all the right ways. Spiral has been around since 2005 and is now in its eighth and final season, but don’t be deterred. Start at the beginning, and you will be drawn right in.

The Chalet

Image may contain Human Person Transportation Car Vehicle Automobile Adventure Leisure Activities and Outdoors
Netflix’s The Chalet

If the above options seem a bit sober minded, try the ludicrously fun suspense thriller The Chalet, in which a group of (attractive, Gallic) friends arrives at an Alpine hotel near a small, curiously abandoned French village. There is a hooded killer in the woods who begins to take the wedding group down one by one. The proceedings are more Agatha Christie than gruesome slasher, and a double-timeline structure keeps the storytelling complex, with long-simmering secrets gradually revealed. Pulpy and propulsive, this is one to save for a Saturday binge.

How to Watch: Stream on Netflix
Continue reading “What to Watch After You’ve Finished ‘Lupin’” →

How Paris Created a Cycling Boom

It’s no Amsterdam, but the City of Light is catching up.

By Erik Nelson

When Lone Andersen lived in Paris in the 1980s, she says she saw “almost no cyclists. I saw one once and I almost felt that I should take a picture.” Despite the fact that France’s most iconic athletic symbol is a bike race, its capital city has never been known as a biking mecca the way Amsterdam or Copenhagen are.

Today, through a mix of new infrastructure, bike sharing and public transit frustrations, that’s changing. In fact, the city’s deputy mayor for transportation, Christophe Najdovski, recently reported that:

PARIS SAW A 54 PERCENT INCREASE IN CYCLISTS BETWEEN SEPTEMBER 2018 AND SEPTEMBER 2019.

That’s according to counts by digital meters set up at 56 sites around Paris to monitor biking. The Copenhagenize index, a comprehensive assessment of bike-friendliness, gives the French capital high marks for adding exclusive bike lanes and pushing bike sharing. But this year’s index says that with a paltry 5 percent of its commuters biking, Paris is a long way from catching up to Copenhagen’s 62 percent.

What could account for the explosion? Paris officials told local media that vélotaf — slang for bike commuting — is a big reason for the increase, while Najdovski touts the city’s plan vélo, or bike plan. The plan has realized amenities like the new two-way cycling path along the Seine’s Left Bank, running 1.5 miles from the Quai d’Orsay in the central city to Alma Bridge. It’s among nearly 200 extra miles of bike paths and lanes in the 2015 plan, along with a $780 million bike-sharing system — one that has admittedly been beset by delays and malfunctions.

If you ask longtime Parisian cycling campaigner and municipal cycling adviser Isabelle Lesens, those new commuters aren’t switching from cars. “It’s very well known that people living in Paris are really fed up with the subway because it’s absolutely crowded,” she says. “So when they discovered it could be possible to go by bike, they tried it.” That incentive can only grow with each public transit strike, like the one this week.

And while more liberal municipal governments vow to accommodate cyclists, even more conservative politicians are jumping on the two-wheeled bandwagon, Lesens says, because of the proliferation of app-based bike sharing. They’ve made it possible to be simultaneously bike-friendly and pro-business, while “nobody dares to be opposed to cycling because of the climate problems,” Lesens explains.

TOPSHOT-FRANCE-WEATHER-SNOW

Still, Paris’ Socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, is taking heat in local media for failing to put the mettle to the pedal after completing less than a quarter of the 43 miles of bike pistes separated from cars by curbs that she’d promised in 2015.

Nevertheless, Hidalgo’s determination to “turn Paris into a global cycling capital” seems to be working. In 2013, Paris was ranked 19th on the Copenhagenize index’s list of best cycling cities. This year it’s ranked eighth. Hidalgo has also famously declared war on the electric scooters ubiquitous in the French capital, setting new rules to regulate the machines that riders often abandon in bike lanes.

Cycling in Paris isn’t for everyone, even those who are fit enough to stay balanced and keep pedaling. Frank Andrews, a 26-year-old journalism graduate student, grew up in London and calls the two cities’ biking environments “kind of comically different.”

Back in England, there are rules: “Most of my friends and myself have been fined for running lights,” Andrews says. Not so in Paris, where “it’s a bit survival of the fittest out on those streets.”

It’s easy to see how Andrews, a resident of the 6th Arrondissement, can hold his own on les rues moyennes, commuting with an expensive fixed-wheel bike like ones used in velodromes. Brakes are his only concession to convenience.

Andrews attributes the ridership growth to delivery services and “Uberized” cycling via sharing apps. As for the latter, Andrews sniffs, “I feel like I see them more on their sides, discarded on a bridge.”

And Andersen, now a traffic engineer in Copenhagen, says her more recent forays onto Paris streets haven’t been encouraging: “I have never felt an urge to ride a bike in Paris — simply because I think it is too dangerous.” In April, the prefecture of police released figures indicating bike accidents had increased about 12.5 percent over the previous year, with 147 cyclists hurt (though none killed) in three months.

What the city needs, she believes, is more lanes with solid curb separating bikes from motorized vehicles. “If the infrastructure isn’t there, you will not get people to [cycle] on a large scale because they don’t feel safe,” she says.

The more Paris is willing to sacrifice space occupied by its Citroëns and Peugeots, Andersen adds, the more it’ll be able to coax even the faint of heart to pedal onto the city’s grand boulevards.

Source: How Paris Created a Cycling Boom – OZY | A Modern Media Company